Home keyboard_arrow_right Lifestyles & Social Issues keyboard_arrow_right Sociology & Society

pseudo-event more_vert Actions

Written by Monica Postelnicu
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Article History

toc Table of Contents

Listen to article 2 minutes

Related Topics: public relations

See all related content →

pseudo-event, an event produced by a communicator with the sole purpose of generating

media attention and publicity. These events lack real news value but still become the subject of
media coverage. In short, pseudo-events are a public relations tactic.

The term pseudo-event was coined by American scholar Daniel J. Boorstin in The Image: A
Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), his book about the effects of media publicity and
advertising on political and social practices in the United States in the 1950s. Boorstin defined
a pseudo-event as an ambiguous truth that appeals to people’s desire to be informed. He
argued that being in the media spotlight was a strong incentive for public figures to stage
artificial events, which became real and important once validated by media coverage. Boorstin
described pseudo-events as the opposite of propaganda, although both forms of
communication have similar consequences and result in public misinformation. Whereas
propaganda slants facts to keep the public from learning the truth, pseudo-events provide the
public with artificial facts that people perceive as real.

Pseudo-events are carefully choreographed, following a prepared script and leaving nothing
to chance. In order to maximize the event’s exposure, they are scheduled in advance, and
journalists are informed of the specific time when the event will occur. Pseudo-events are
designed to be dramatic, to make them interesting for the public, and they tend to generate
iconic images, such as big enthusiastic crowds. Pseudo-events can include press conferences,
advertisements, speeches, and other similar events covering issues with little value in terms of
content and importance.

Monica Postelnicu

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Home keyboard_arrow_right Lifestyles & Social Issues keyboard_arrow_right Sociology & Society

public relations more_vert Actions

communications
Also known as: PR
Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: May 19, 2023 • Article History

toc Table of Contents

Listen to article 8 minutes

Key People: Edward Bernays • Sophie, duchess of Edinburgh • Carl Byoir • Ivy Ledbetter Lee

Related Topics: public opinion • political spin • pseudo-event • crisis management • promotion

See all related content →

public relations, byname PR, aspect of communications involving the relations between an
entity subject to or seeking public attention and the various publics that are or may be
interested in it. The entity seeking attention may be a business corporation, an individual
politician, a performer or author, a government or government agency, a charitable
organization, a religious body, or almost any other person or organization. The publics may
include segments as narrow as female voters of a particular political party who are between 35
and 50 years of age or the shareholders in a particular corporation; or the publics may be as
broad as any national population or the world at large. The concerns of public relations
operate both ways between the subject entity, which may be thought of as the client, and the
publics involved. The important elements of public relations are to acquaint the client with the
public conceptions of the client and to affect these perceptions by focusing, curtailing,
amplifying, or augmenting information about the client as it is conveyed to the publics.
The empire builders of the 19th century often disdained a curious public and an inquisitive
press, but this attitude soon came under fire from muckraking journalists. In 1906 Ivy Lee, a
former newspaperman, became publicity adviser to a group of American anthracite coal-mine
operators who had aroused the anger of the press by their haughty attitudes toward miners
and the press in labour disputes. Lee persuaded the mine owners to abandon their refusal to
answer questions, and he shortly sent out an announcement that the operators would supply
the press with all possible information. Later that year he was retained by the Pennsylvania
Railroad and brought into effect a new practice: giving the press full information about
railroad accidents. In this he was forging a major ingredient of what had not yet come to be
called public relations.

More From Britannica

marketing: Public relations

Government agencies began hiring publicists in Great Britain and the United States; U.S.
legislation (1913) required congressional authorization to spend government funds on
“publicity experts,” whereupon the experts masqueraded under such euphemisms as “director
of information.” The natural affinity of government for public relations, little explored since
Machiavelli, was flowering. From 1924 to 1933 in England, the Empire Marketing Board used
large-scale publicity to promote trade; it has been called “the archetype of government public
relations departments.” In Great Britain, as in the United States, the appointment of public
relations directors by various government departments during World War II was a prelude to
greatly increased postwar emphasis on public relations. Within a decade hardly an agency of
any government was without its public relations staff. Perhaps more importantly, public
relations had come to be recognized as indispensable to any organization subject to attention
in the press and the rapidly developing broadcast media.

There was, however, no uniformly accepted simple definition of the craft, trade, dodge, or art
of public relations, and there is none today. This is true in large part because of the great
variety of its elements. These include generating favourable publicity and knowing what kind
of story is likely to be printed or broadcast. This rudimentary aspect of public relations is
complicated by the variety of media; besides newspapers, magazines, and radio and television,
there are publications of professional associations, recreational groups, and trade associations;
producers of stage, motion-picture, and television entertainment; direct mail lists; and others.

Public relations embraces a serious element of the ethical counseling and sociological
education of the client. One of the great American practitioners, Earl Newsom, would force his
carefully selected clients’ attention to the 19th-century classic The Crowd (1896; La
Psychologie des foules, 1895), by the French sociologist Gustave LeBon, to persuade them that
kings (and business potentates) were no longer the rulers but that the crowd—the public—was
now sovereign and must be pleased. Public-relations counselors to airplane manufacturers and
airlines persuaded their clients, as Ivy Lee had done the railroads, to be candid and forthright
with the facts and to supply the background necessary for context and understanding when
airplane crashes occurred. This element of public relations is complicated and sometimes
obscured by the flamboyance of self-promoters in the field and by the excesses of occasional
charlatans. It is also complicated by divergent views, for a minority of practitioners believes
that silence and secrecy—“stonewalling,” if need be—are the proper response to a deluge of
adverse publicity.

The role of public relations was once defined by Edward L. Bernays, one of its pioneers, as “the
engineering of consent.” The characterization is accurate, but out of context it oversimplifies
and has been used to attack public relations as cynical and manipulative. The real tasks of
public relations in the business world may focus on corporate interests or those of marketing
products or services; on image creation or defense against attack; on broad public relations or
straight publicity. In general, the strategic goal of public relations is to project a favourable
public image, one of corporate good citizenship; but this cannot be accomplished with lights
and mirrors in an age of investigative journalism, and the first responsibility of public relations
is to persuade management that the reality must correspond with the desired image. Public
relations is concerned with creating a favourable climate for marketing the client’s products or
services, including maintaining good relations with merchants and distributors as well as
placing product publicity and disseminating information to trade and industrial groups. This
calls for the preparation of technical articles addressed to technicians and engineers and of
others translating technical information for lay readers. It further includes publicizing
praiseworthy activities by company personnel. Financial public relations involves relations
with a company’s own stockholders (stockholder relations) as well as with the investment
community.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to

exclusive content.

Subscribe Now

To a large extent, the job of public relations is to optimize good news and to forestall bad news,
but when disaster strikes, the public relations practitioner’s task, in consultation with legal
counsel, is to assess the situation and the damage, to assemble the facts, together with
necessary background information, and to offer these to the news media, along with answers
to their questions of fact. When a client is under attack, it is a public relations responsibility to
organize the client’s response—usually involving several complicated issues—to be both lucid
and persuasive.

Government relations is often included in public relations under the general designation of
public affairs and encompasses lobbying. Industrial relations (i.e., labour-management
relations), employee relations, and customer relations sometimes are accounted part of public
relations. Community relations is important wherever a client has an office or plant.

Modern corporate executives often do not excel at public speaking or writing in nonbusiness
language, and a duty of public relations is to translate executives’ knowledge into speeches or
articles intelligible to nonspecialists. In fact, the prime responsibility of public relations can be
seen as interpreting the client to the public and vice versa.

From the 1940s responsible public relations practitioners have endeavoured to codify and
uphold ethical standards. Many have attempted to bring the status of a profession to their
calling, through associations such as the Public Relations Society of America, the Public
Relations Consultants Association (London), the Fédération Européene des Relations
Publiques (Brussels), and the International Public Relations Association (London). Many
colleges and universities offer not only courses but also academic majors in public relations.
Boston University was the first to establish a School of Public Relations (later,
Communications) in 1947.

Home keyboard_arrow_right Lifestyles & Social Issues keyboard_arrow_right Sociology & Society

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
social structure more_vert Actions
Written by William Form , Nico Wilterdink See All
Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: Article History

toc Table of Contents

 zoom_in

Karl Marx

See all media

Key People: Herbert Spencer • Jürgen Habermas • Gunnar Myrdal • Talcott Parsons • A.L. Rowse

Related Topics: governance • kinship • environmentalism • institutionalism • marriage

See all related content →

social structure, in sociology, the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby

human beings in a society interact and live together. Social structure is often treated together
with the concept of social change, which deals with the forces that change the social structure
and the organization of society.

Although it is generally agreed that the term social structure refers to regularities in social life,
its application is inconsistent. For example, the term is sometimes wrongly applied when other
concepts such as custom, tradition, role, or norm would be more accurate.

Studies of social structure attempt to explain such matters as integration and trends in
inequality. In the study of these phenomena, sociologists analyze organizations, social
categories (such as age groups), or rates (such as of crime or birth). This approach, sometimes
called formal sociology, does not refer directly to individual behaviour or interpersonal
interaction. Therefore, the study of social structure is not considered a behavioral science; at
this level, the analysis is too abstract. It is a step removed from the consideration of concrete
human behaviour, even though the phenomena studied in social structure result from humans
responding to each other and to their environments. Those who study social structure do,
however, follow an empirical (observational) approach to research, methodology, and
epistemology.

Social structure is sometimes defined simply as patterned social relations—those regular and
repetitive aspects of the interactions between the members of a given social entity. Even on
this descriptive level, the concept is highly abstract: it selects only certain elements from
ongoing social activities. The larger the social entity considered, the more abstract the concept
tends to be. For this reason, the social structure of a small group is generally more closely
related to the daily activities of its individual members than is the social structure of a larger
society. In the study of larger social groups, the problem of selection is acute: much depends
on what is included as components of the social structure. Various theories offer different
solutions to this problem of determining the primary characteristics of a social group.

Before these different theoretical views can be discussed, however, some remarks must be
made on the general aspects of the social structure of any society. Social life is structured along
the dimensions of time and space. Specific social activities take place at specific times, and
time is divided into periods that are connected with the rhythms of social life—the routines of
the day, the month, and the year. Specific social activities are also organized at specific places;
particular places, for instance, are designated for such activities as working, worshiping,
eating, and sleeping. Territorial boundaries delineate these places and are defined by rules of
property that determine the use and possession of scarce goods. Additionally, in any society
there is a more or less regular division of labour. Yet another universal structural characteristic
of human societies is the regulation of violence. All violence is a potentially disruptive force; at
the same time, it is a means of coercion and coordination of activities. Human beings have
formed political units, such as nations, within which the use of violence is strictly regulated
and which, at the same time, are organized for the use of violence against outside groups.

Furthermore, in any society there are arrangements within the structure for sexual
reproduction and the care and education of the young. These arrangements take the form
partly of kinship and marriage relations. Finally, systems of symbolic communication,
particularly language, structure the interactions between the members of any society.
 Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to
exclusive content.

Subscribe Now

Structure and social organization

The term structure has been applied to human societies since the 19th century. Before that
time, its use was more common in other fields such as construction or biology.
zoom_in
 Karl Marx

Karl Marx used construction as a metaphor when he spoke of “the economic structure
[Struktur] of society, the real basis on which is erected a legal and political superstructure
[Überbau] and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond.” Thus, according to
Marx, the basic structure of society is economic, or material, and this structure influences the
rest of social life, which is defined as nonmaterial, spiritual, or ideological.
 zoom_in

Herbert Spencer

The biological connotations of the term structure are evident in the work of British
philosopher Herbert Spencer. He and other social theorists of the 19th and early 20th
centuries conceived of society as an organism comprising interdependent parts that form a
structure similar to the anatomy of a living body. Although social scientists since Spencer and
Marx have disagreed on the concept of social structure, their definitions share common
elements. In the most general way, social structure is identified by those features of a social
entity (a society or a group within a society) that persist over time, are interrelated, and
influence both the functioning of the entity as a whole and the activities of its individual
members.
 zoom_in

Émile Durkheim
The origin of contemporary sociological references to social structure can be traced to Émile
Durkheim, who argued that parts of society are interdependent and that this interdependency
imposes structure on the behaviour of institutions and their members. In other words,
Durkheim believed that individual human behaviour is shaped by external forces. Similarly,
American anthropologist George P. Murdock, in his book Social Structure (1949), examined
kinship systems in preliterate societies and used social structure as a taxonomic device for
classifying, comparing, and correlating various aspects of kinship systems.

Several ideas are implicit in the notion of social structure. First, human beings form social
relations that are not arbitrary and coincidental but exhibit some regularity and continuity.
Second, social life is not chaotic and formless but is, in fact, differentiated into certain groups,
positions, and institutions that are interdependent or functionally interrelated. Third,
individual choices are shaped and circumscribed by the social environment, because social
groups, although constituted by the social activities of individuals, are not a direct result of the
wishes and intentions of the individual members. The notion of social structure implies, in
other words, that human beings are not completely free and autonomous in their choices and
actions but are instead constrained by the social world they inhabit and the social relations
they form with one another.

Within the broad framework of these and other general features of human society, there is an
enormous variety of social forms between and within societies. Some social scientists use the
concept of social structure as a device for creating an order for the various aspects of social life.
In other studies, the concept is of greater theoretical importance; it is regarded as an
explanatory concept, a key to the understanding of human social life. Several theories have
been developed to account for both the similarities and the varieties. In these theories, certain
aspects of social life are regarded as basic and, therefore, central components of the social
structure. Some of the more prominent of these theories are reviewed here.

Structural functionalism
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, a British social anthropologist, gave the concept of social structure a
central place in his approach and connected it to the concept of function. In his view, the
components of the social structure have indispensable functions for one another—the
continued existence of the one component is dependent on that of the others—and for the
society as a whole, which is seen as an integrated, organic entity. His comparative studies of
preliterate societies demonstrated that the interdependence of institutions regulated much of
social and individual life. Radcliffe-Brown defined social structure empirically as patterned, or
“normal,” social relations (those aspects of social activities that conform to accepted social
rules or norms). These rules bind society’s members to socially useful activities.
American sociologist Talcott Parsons elaborated on the work of Durkheim and Radcliffe-
Brown by using their insights on social structure to formulate a theory that was valid for large
and complex societies. For Parsons, social structure was essentially normative—that is,
consisting of “institutional patterns of normative culture.” Put differently, social behaviour
conforms to norms, values, and rules that direct behaviour in specific situations. These norms
vary according to the positions of the individual actors: they define different roles, such as
various occupational roles or the traditional roles of husband-father and wife-mother.
Moreover, these norms vary among different spheres of life and lead to the creation of social
institutions—for example, property and marriage. Norms, roles, and institutions are all
components of the social structure on different levels of complexity.

Later sociologists criticized definitions of social structure by scholars such as Spencer and
Parsons because they believed the work (1) made improper use of analogy, (2) through its
association with functionalism defended the status quo, (3) was notoriously abstract, (4) could
not explain conflict and change, and (5) lacked a methodology for empirical confirmation.

Theories of class and power

Parsons’s work was criticized for several reasons, not least for the comparatively meagre
attention he paid to inequalities of power, wealth, and other social rewards. Other social
theorists, including functionalists such as the American sociologist Robert K. Merton, gave
these “distributional” properties a more central place in their concepts of social structure. For
Merton and others, social structure consists not only of normative patterns but also of the
inequalities of power, status, and material privileges, which give the members of a society
widely different opportunities and alternatives.

In complex societies, these inequalities define different strata, or classes, that form the
stratification system, or class structure, of the society. Both aspects of the social structure, the
normative and the distributive aspect, are strongly interconnected, as may be inferred from the
observation that members of different classes often have different and even conflicting norms
and values.

This leads to a consideration contrary to structural functionalism: certain norms in a society

may be established not because of any general consensus about their moral value but because
they are forced upon the population by those who have both the interest in doing so and the
power to carry it out. To take one example, the “norms” of apartheid in South Africa reflected
the interests and values of only one section of the population, which had the power to enforce
them upon the majority. In theories of class and power, this argument has been generalized:
norms, values, and ideas are explained as the result of the inequalities of power between
groups with conflicting interests.

The most influential theory of this type has been Marxism, or historical materialism. The
Marxian view is succinctly summarized in Marx’s phrase “The ideas of the ruling class are, in
every age, the ruling ideas.” These ideas are regarded as reflections of class interests and are
connected to the power structure, which is identified with the class structure. This Marxian
model, which was claimed to be particularly valid for capitalist societies, has met with much
criticism. One basic problem is its distinction between economic structure and spiritual
superstructure, which are identified with social being and consciousness, respectively. This
suggests that economic activities and relations are in themselves somehow independent of
consciousness, as if they occur independently of human beings.

Nevertheless, the Marxian model became influential even among non-Marxist social scientists.
The distinction between material structure and nonmaterial superstructure continues to be
reflected in sociological textbooks as the distinction between social structure and culture.
Social structure here refers to the ways people are interrelated or interdependent; culture
refers to the ideas, knowledge, norms, customs, and capacities that they have learned and
share as members of a society.

Structuralism
 zoom_in
check

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Another important theoretical approach to the concept of social structure is structuralism

(sometimes called French structuralism), which studies the underlying, unconscious
regularities of human expression—that is, the unobservable structures that have observable
effects on behaviour, society, and culture. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss derived
this theory from structural linguistics, developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
According to Saussure, any language is structured in the sense that its elements are
interrelated in nonarbitrary, regular, rule-bound ways; a competent speaker of the language
largely follows these rules without being aware of doing so. The task of the theorist is to detect
this underlying structure, including the rules of transformation that connect the structure to
the various observed expressions.

According to Lévi-Strauss, this same method can be applied to social and cultural life in
general. He constructed theories concerning the underlying structure of kinship systems,
myths, and customs of cooking and eating. The structural method, in short, purports to detect
the common structure of widely different social and cultural forms. This structure does not
determine concrete expressions, however; the variety of expressions it generates is potentially
unlimited. Moreover, the structures that generate the varieties of social and cultural forms
ultimately reflect, according to Lévi-Strauss, basic characteristics of the human mind.

zoom_in

Michel Foucault

Structures such as the human mind, grammar, and language are sometimes called “deep
structures” or “substructures.” Since such structures are not readily observable, they must be
discerned from intensive interpretive analysis of myths, language, or texts. Then they can be
applied to explain the customs or traits of social institutions. The French philosopher Michel
Foucault, for example, used this approach in his study of corporal punishment. His research
led him to conclude that the abolition of corporal punishment by liberal states was an illusion,
because the state substituted punishment of the “soul” by monitoring and controlling both the
behaviour of prisoners and the behaviour of everyone in the society.

Structuralism became an intellectual fashion in the 1960s in France, where writers as different
as Roland Barthes, Foucault, and Louis Althusser were regarded as representatives of the new
theoretical current. In this broad sense, however, structuralism is not one coherent theoretical
perspective. The Marxist structuralism of Althusser, for example, is far removed from the
anthropological structuralism of Lévi-Strauss. The structural method, when applied by
different scholars, appears to lead to different results.

More From Britannica

culture: Social organization

The onslaught of criticism launched against structural functionalism, class theories, and
structuralism indicates the problematic nature of the concept of social structure. Yet the notion
of social structure is not easy to dispense with, because it expresses ideas of continuity,
regularity, and interrelatedness in social life. Other terms are often used that have similar, but
not identical, meanings, including social network, social figuration, and social system.
Starting with his work in general sociological theory in the mid-1970s, British sociologist
Anthony Giddens suggested the term structuration to express the view that social life is, to a
certain extent, both dynamic and ordered.

The critical difference between social structure theory and structuralism is one of approach.
Analysis of social structure uses standard empirical (observational) methods to arrive at
generalizations about society, while structuralism uses subjective, interpretive,
phenomenological, and qualitative analysis. Most sociologists prefer the social structure
approach and regard structuralism as philosophical—that is, more compatible with the
humanities than with the social sciences. Still, a significant number of sociologists insist that
structuralism occupies a legitimate place in their discipline.

Later trends in social structure theory

Those pursuing research in the area of social structure have pursued limited but practical
goals. They have focused on the development of theories, laws, generalizations, calculi, and
methods that account for structural regularities in society. They have not, however, been
concerned with demonstrating the limitless structural regularities in society (such as linguistic
routines, the permanence of national boundaries, the stability of religious practices, or the
durability of gender or racial inequality).

In concrete terms, the task of structural analysis is not so much to account for poverty, for
example, as it is to account for the rates of poverty. Likewise, the analysis focuses on empirical
data such as the distribution of cities in the world, the patterns of land use, the shifts in
educational achievement, changes in occupational structure, the manifestation of revolutions,
the increase in collaboration between institutions, the existence of networks among groups,
the routines of different types of organizations, the cycles of growth or decline in organizations
and institutions, or the unintended collective consequences of individual choices.

Only a few sociologists have developed structural theories that apply to institutions and whole
societies—an approach known as macrosociology. Gerhard Lenski in Power and Privilege
(1966) classified societies on the basis of their main tools of subsistence and, unlike Marx,
demonstrated statistically that variations in the primary tools used in a given society
systematically accounted for different types of social stratification systems.

An entire specialty in sociology has been built on a structural theory developed by Amos
Hawley in Human Ecology (1986). For Hawley, the explanatory variables are the makeup of
the population, the external environment, the complex of organizations, and technology.
Research has revealed that these variables account for differences in the spatial characteristics,
rhythm of activities, mobility patterns, and external relations between communities in various
parts of the world. Applying this framework to the world ecosystem, Hawley focused on the
problem of its expansion and growth. Unlike Marxist world systems theory, which emphasizes
political factors, Hawley’s work emphasized technology as the critical factor. He argued that
the growth and spread of technology leads to population growth, burdens the land, and
prompts changes in the organization of institutions. At worst, according to Hawley, the long-
term costs of expansion would lead to polarization and inequality, urban decay, environmental
destruction, and political instability, which over time must result in a reordering of the
ecosystem.

In Structural Contexts of Opportunities (1994), Peter M. Blau developed a formal

macrosociological theory concerning the influences of large population structures on social
life. He identified how different population groups relate to each other. He found that
occupational heterogeneity increases the chance for contact between people in different status
groups. For populations with multiple-group affiliations, in-group associations tend to
promote intergroup relations.

These are some examples of ways in which logically drawn abstract generalizations provide
insights about society. Such findings are approached through macrosociological or structural
theory and are not readily available through the study of individuals or isolated groups.

Conclusion
Social structure and social change are general concepts used by social scientists, particularly in
the fields of sociology and social and cultural anthropology. They are often conceived of as
polarized concepts, with social structure referring to basic characteristics of social life—those
demonstrating a lasting and permanent quality—and social change reflecting the opposite.
However, the relationship between the two concepts is more complicated. Social structure, for
example, cannot be conceptualized adequately without some recognition of actual or potential
change, just as social change, as a more or less regular process, is structured over time and is
inconceivable without the notion of continuity. Both concepts, in the end, can contribute to a
fuller understanding of society, its patterns, and patterns of change.

Nico Wilterdink

William Form

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica